Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (for PC)

Distinct and highly rewarding combat and grappling mechanics. Vastly improved visuals and performance compared to the console version. Included DLC adds great longevity to the game.

Cons

Tepid storytelling and character interactions weaken the game's plot. Unlocking your full combat arsenal is time consuming. Pawn customization is finicky and poorly explained. No Japanese voice tracks.

Bottom Line

Dragon's Dogma nails combat and adventure, though it misses the mark somewhat with its story elements. If you overlook the game's rougher edges, you're in for great over-the-top action and high adventure.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a single-player RPG, with action-driven gameplay akin to Capcom's Devil May Cry and Monster Hunter series. It draws inspiration from classic fables and myths, setting the game in a world burdened with the return of a destructive red dragon. Its combat is flashy and engaging, and the open-world environments are rich with detail, but the quest-driven plot and sparse character development weaken what would otherwise be an interesting story. The RPG leveling stalls combat, as well, so you won't fight at your full potential until you've leveled your class sufficiently. These issues may turn off less patient players, but those hoping for a grand, long-lived adventure across an action-packed open world will find plenty to discover and enjoy. I reviewed Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen on PC, but it's also available on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms.

Of Dragons and Men In Dragon's Dogma, you are an ordinary fisher from a coastal village who is cursed by a rampaging dragon for having the gall to stand up and challenge it. The beast plucks your heart from your chest and challenges you to face him if you want it back. This starts your adventure across the monster-infested realm of Gransys in search of the menace. The plot details the cyclical return of the dragon and the forces that manipulate the world from behind the scenes.

Unfortunately, Dragon's Dogma doesn't offer enough characterization to its central protagonists for the story to have notable impact. It's hard to sympathize with people you don't know or care for, after all. In addition, the dragon barely has any presence in the first half of the game. Aside from ruining a pier and goading you, the dragon doesn't cause much trouble. There are no villages ruined in the dragon's wake, and NPCs go about their lives and interactions, while only paying lip service to the dragon's existence. Once the game hits the halfway point, the plot picks up tremendously and characters start getting the story exposition they deserve. But, by that point, you may not care.

The storytelling does little to entice, so the only real motivator is your own wanderlust. Fortunately, the countryside is littered with dangerous monsters, including lowly goblins, towering Cyclopes, and man-eating chimeras. Exploring the game world your first time through is a particular treat, because of the game's spontaneous action. You could be escorting a knight NPC to an old fortress one moment, only to be thrust into a battle with a fiendishly powerful drake the very next. Monsters always get the jump on you, so Dragon's Dogma feels surprisingly dynamic. You're always rewarded with experience and gold for completing these engagements, so they're worth tackling whenever you can.

The Heart of the Matter You choose one of three combat vocations at the start of the game: the sword-wielding Fighter, the dagger- or bow-toting Strider, and the magic-casting Mage. Once your character reaches level 10, you unlock advanced versions of these classes, as well as hybrid classes, each with unique skills and specializations.

Melee combat uses light and heavy attacks, but there are no real combos to memorize. Light attacks are quick and effective in most situations, while fierce attacks are slower, but have higher stun and shield-breaking properties. Mage classes share these, but they are less effective than dedicated melee classes.

Your second universal ability is the grapple, which really sets Dragon's Dogma apart from other action-RPGs. You can grab hold of stunned enemies to throw them around, or open them up to further attacks. Gransys is filled with massive monsters, and the grapple skill lets you climb these beasts to reach critical weak points.

In addition, each vocation gives you several techniques that can be used alongside your basic attacks. Fighters are slower and more defensive than other classes, but utilize powerful blade and shield skills to engage enemies in melee. The advanced Fighter class, Warrior, drops defense and evasion in exchange for powerful blows and crowd-control abilities. The lack of evasion and defense means that you need to keep moving to avoid enemies and set up the class' stronger attacks. All classes in Dragon's Dogma are fun to utilize, and let you play the game in whatever manner you see fit.

While your skill and reflexes dictate how well you perform in a fight, Dragon's Dogma's stat system determines how you deal and take damage. Naturally, you gain higher stats as you earn levels, as you would in any RPG. However, defense and attack are stat-based, so it is entirely possible to come across an enemy that you can't kill yet because your stats are too low to overcome their defense. This can be a touch frustrating if you're hoping to conquer the world at a low level, but it also gives you something to come back to should an area feel too challenging on your first visit.

Like many of Capcom's other action titles, there is plenty of flourish in Dragon's Dogma, which gives combat an incredibly over-the-top feel. Melee skills strike enemies with weighty, chunky thuds. Spells are a spectacle of explosions and particle effects. Dragon's Dogma does a fantastic job of making you feel powerful. There's nothing quite as satisfying as clubbing a pesky goblin into the ground so hard that it bounces thirty feet into the air. Sure, it sounds absurd, but it looks cool and feels amazing to execute.

A Legion of Pawns The Pawn mechanic is Dragon's Dogma's only major online element. Pawns are inter-dimensional, AI-controlled mercenaries that accompany you on your quest. You create one as your primary companion, but you can hire additional pawns to form a party of four. Your personal pawn can be customized by changing its equipment, vocation, and skills, much like you can do with your own character. When you're online, other players' pawns roam your game, letting you hire them at your leisure. When you are ready to dismiss them, you can also rank them and gift them with items, which they take back to their creators.

Pawn behavior is dictated by a complex AI system, which is defined by the pawn's combat experience, as well as the Inclinations they are assigned when created. Pawns learn by fighting alongside you and emulating your fighting style, so training them can be very involved. For example, my pawn and I tackled a dungeon together as great sword-wielding Warriors. I made heavy use of the sweeping Corona Slash skill to trip up enemies, and soon enough my pawn began to do the same. As a Ranger, I sniped flying drakes with the Deathly Arrow skill, and quickly saw my pawn aping me whenever she was switched to the Ranger vocation. While there is no online multiplayer in Dragon' Dogma, pawns represent their creators in fighting prowess, so a good pawn says a lot about the player who trained them.

The system is not without flaws, unfortunately. Inclinations determine your pawn's behavior just as much as their experience, but they are deliberately obscured and difficult to manipulate. When creating a pawn, you are given a questionnaire that determines how they engage enemies. However, this behavior changes over time through combat, which makes training a pawn very confusing for new players. If you spend time opening chests and collecting items during battle, don't be surprised when your pawn does too. Likewise, if you run from battle and command your pawn to follow you, they will eventually follow you around all the time and become very passive during battle. When bad behavior has set in, you need to buy special Inclination potions to readjust pawn AI, which feels needlessly obtuse. I would've much preferred if Dragon's Dogma let me set pawns' Inclinations from a game menu.

The Heart of the Dragon Dragon's Dogma pushed the limits of Capcom's MT Frameworks engine, which was designed to accommodate games with limited areas and levels, like Devil May Cry and Resident Evil. Dragon's Dogma's visuals and performance took a huge hit due to the game's open-world nature, so the console version ran at sub-30 FPS. It also used awkward letterboxing to display its 1280 by 608 resolution. Thankfully, this is no longer the case on PC.

Dragon's Dogma can display the game at whatever frame rate or resolution your computer allows, assuming you meet the game's required specs. The resolution can be lowered to 640 by 480 or raised to 4K. The frame rate is also vastly improved, and it can be locked at either 30 or 60 frames per second. If your computer can handle it, the frame rate can be unlocked entirely with the variable setting, which lets the game blaze along at 150FPS.

Dragon's Dogma uses FXAA, FXAA3, and FXAA3HQ anti-aliasing. HDR can be set to low or high, which affects the luminosity of lighting sources. Low is closer to the console version, while high is much brighter and more dynamic. Other settings are fairly standard and include shadow quality, texture fidelity, grass quality, draw distance, and so on, each of which can be set to low, medium, and high.

Dragon's Dogma also includes all the bells and whistles you would expect from a Steam release, including achievements, Cloud saves, Steam Controller support, Big Picture mode support, and trading cards.

Lastly, this version of the game allows you to assign items to hotkeys when playing on keyboard and mouse. This make accessing your lantern, curatives, and throwing items much easier. The keyboard and mouse controls work very nicely in general, and lend themselves particularly well to aiming-oriented vocations, like the bow-wielding Strider and Ranger.

The only downside to the PC release is the lack of Japanese audio. While I quite like the English voice acting, the original release of the game included both language files, so players could choose whichever they preferred. The PC version is English only, with alternate language subtitles. The PC version also does not include the Berserk gear, which were sets of equipment inspired by Golden Age Guts and Griffith from the renowned manga, Berserk.

Flying Into Free Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is a rough gem of sorts. One need only look at the encyclopedic art book to see that it was much bigger game cut short. Despite its shortcomings, Dragon's Dogma delivers a challenging and satisfying adventure. In truth, the improved visuals and performance alone do wonders for the game. If you're new to the series and are looking for some solid fantasy action, Dragon's Dogma has it in spades. If you played on console, the improvements may entice you to give the game another go, too.

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Gabriel Zamora is as passionate about writing as he is about video games and electronics, and his fervor has led to game and tech article contributions in a variety of online publications including PCMag.com, Examiner.com, 2D-X.com, and Multiplayergames.com. When not criticizing the state of gaming or reviewing tech, Gabriel spends much of his time attending related events in New York City, catching up on his favorite written works, or trying out new cooking recipes at home. You can follow him on Twitter: @Dracozombie....
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